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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

And people still ask me why I prefer taking high speed trains!

I know! I just love that hourly New York-to-London train service that runs under the Atlantic...

You don't need sarcasm to make fun of rail. Every time I try to get a hypothetical route on Amtrak.com for Dallas to New Orleans, or Florida, it insists on routing me through Chicago. Every. Single. Time.

In fairness, that's basically what the airlines do as well, they just have more hubs and the hub and spoke model itself is less visible because of the higher speeds involved. Presumably a more viable rail service would involve at least more hubs and hopefully also higher speeds.

I live in the Midwest and always have to fly through at least one hub to get anywhere useful, so I'm getting a kick out of this.

(I once was trying to book a flight from Kansas City to Portland, and -- I kid you not -- one suggested route was through Atlanta)

That would likely be a bit claustrophobic should it ever be made. That's what I mean - big planes should be used between big hubs, for example leaving from the ocean beside England and landing in the ocean beside new york, then you take a bunch of trains to the various destinations.

Check-in, security checks and all that can then be distributed amongst all the small train stations. When you arrive at a plane hub, you just walk in with your hand luggage.

I used to think that smaller regional planes were the future, but nowadays I'm thinking perhaps the large titanicesque planes may be the way to go to solve this problem.

No thanks -- keep your security checks out of our train system. If people insist on flying they can pay the price at the airport.

Hong Kong has this system, and I love it. The airport is far enough out, that it has it's own train, (the airport express).

Not the actual security screen, but all the rest of it can be done right at the train station. You can check your bags and even check in for your flight. The lines are short, and you can dump the bags early and enjoy the trip.

To be fair, this would be an amazing engineering project. The technology needed already exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen

LHR to JFK would only take about 9 hours. By train.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel

On the other hand, it doesn't exist, and would be crazy expensive.

It makes me sad how much the human race is capable of and how much of that capability is unrealized for cost reasons.

"It wouldn't be profitable."

Much better to kill each other over religion instead...

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